


Agent

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU in canon setting, Angst, F/M, Fear, Guilt, Jyn is not present in chapter one, Pain, Post-Battle of Scarif, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide mention, Unhappiness, and Cassian isn't sure he knows how or if he even should, and some of them are entitled pricks, bodily autonomy and violation, doing terrible things for a cause you believe in, forced administration of drugs, given what he believes himself to be, mention of rape and torture, not everyone who signs up for the rebels is a particularly good person, only being able to help someone by ending their suffering, pretty dark in places, rebelcaptain but they haven't yet talked about what their relationship is, secondary character death, suicide pills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-22 18:12:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14314341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian will always have to live with the knowledge of the things he's done for the cause.





	1. Agent

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this for a while and have agonised about whether to post it at all, as some of it is pretty dark stuff and the underlying theme is basically "violation in its various forms, and what it does to you".   
> In the end I had to either post it and be damned, or shut it away and never know if people would want to read it; and I've chosen to post.   
> Chapter 1 is from the OC's pov; chapters 2, 3 and 4 from Cassian's pov; chapter 5 from Jyn's pov.

Avdila Thiepp knows that torture doesn’t work, and chances are her torturers know it too.  One of them at least, the thin dark Lieutenant with the down-turned mouth, seems permanently disgusted by proceedings.  Presumably at the waste of time and effort involved. 

He’s one of the watchers, though, not an active participant.  There’s a hierarchy in these things, of course.  Officers don’t dirty their hands.

But even though they must know it’s one of the worst ways of gathering Intel, she also knows they are going to carry on regardless, because that’s what the Empire does with prisoners. 

She knew from the start what she was getting into.  There will be no extraction.  She was meant to take a lullaby pill in the event of getting cornered, but she was in the ‘fresher when they came, naked and unarmed.  She broke a man’s arm and nearly gouged out another’s eye in the fight, but was pinned and knocked out before she had a chance to reach her jacket where it lay on the bed, and the innocuous button on the collar, that held her only escape route.

She’s in a bad way now; coming to, hanging by her wrists in the interrogation chamber, she logs the state of her injuries, registers the growing numbness in her lower limbs and the continuing medicated fuzz in her brain.  She’s been drugged with sorf and spice and truth serum, with stimulants and pain-enhancers; she’s been electroshocked, half-drowned, and raped repeatedly, had the bones in her hands and feet broken one by one, and periodically she’s been simply beaten to unconsciousness. 

_This is the enemy, this is what they do.  I knew when I signed up.  I knew._

_Please let me die._

The worst of it is that the questions they’re asking betray both how little they know, and how much they know without realising it.  They seem literally unaware of how close they are to some very serious truths.

If she reaches the point (as she must not, cannot do, but without the mercy of death coming soon she probably will) – if she reaches the point of simply telling them _Yes yes yes_ to every assertion they make and every question they ask – the point where normally the pointlessness of such methods of interrogation becomes clear, every supposition indiscriminately confirmed so that none of them can be trusted – she will in fact be confirming things that are true.  The rebels’ main base is indeed in the Western Reaches, it is indeed in the Anoat sector; it is indeed in the Hoth system. 

Until she breaks, that’s a single accurate supposition among a dozen wrong ones.  But if she breaks, then they’ll know, and she will have betrayed everything.

_Force, please.  Let me die.  Let my heart stop._

The door opens. 

Interesting.  It’s the sour-faced officer, the one who arrived (she thinks) yesterday.  Up till now he’s only come in to observe while her handlers went about their work; he hasn’t asked questions, hasn’t taken any active part, just watched with that disapproving look on his face.  Now as he comes inside she sees that he’s alone. 

A new technique, perhaps.  Her aching heart sinks at the thought of trying to resist an empathy-based questioning, after all that pain.  _Please, please, let me die, just let me die…_

Sward, says the name tag on the breast of his immaculate uniform jacket.

He stands in front of her, silent, looking over her injuries.  She blinks swollen eyes at him and tightens her jaw. 

Finally he starts talking, and her mind crumples in shock at his accent.  Krif, he’s not from one of the Core worlds, not even pretending to be.  Some traitor scum from an occupied planet.  How can they ever win, when the Empire can seduce even the people it crushes the most into joining up and serving its agenda of oppression? 

“Thiepp,” he says quietly.  “I’m taking over your interrogation now.  You’ve proved your mettle, proved that we can’t beat anything out of you.  I have nothing but admiration for the dedication you’ve shown to your cause.  But now it’s time to think of yourself.  Time to save yourself.  You know what I mean.  None of this –“ a casual gesture, taking in her broken body and bloodied face, her bare feet just barely touching the floor – “need go on any longer.”

_Here we go…  Praise me, reassure me that you have the power to get me out of all this, then start asking inconsequential things, whittling away my resistance.  I have to resist, but, Force, please, **please** , I don’t know if I have the strength to start fighting again.  _

_Just let me die._

Sward reaches up his left hand and touches her face.  His fingertips are hard, and on the first two fingers there are calluses.  Very distinct, unmistakable calluses; she’d know their feel anywhere, her own ruined hands have the exact same ones.  From steadying a Blas-Tech A280 in the sniper rifle configuration, over thousands of hours of target practice. 

It’s jarringly wrong for this smooth Imperial who purports to be an interrogation specialist to have the hands of a sniper.  She frowns; she’s too muzzy-headed with pain and interrogation drugs to make sense of this.  And it doesn’t make sense, it simply doesn’t.

He lays his palm on her swollen cheek.  Says gently “I’m sorry about everything these idiots have put you through.”

More of the empathy stuff.  She must be imagining the sensation that the hand holding her is a soldier’s.  A friend’s.  _No, no, Avdila, don’t…_

She closes her eyes for a moment.  _I must not fail. Must resist. Must..._

When she opens them again, he’s very close, so that she flinches instinctively and struggles for a second against his hand holding her jaw.  She can see the dark beginnings of stubble on his upper lip.  With hair that dark he must need to shave twice a day to keep up the face the Empire expects. 

His skin is darker than usual, too, a soft tan instead of the usual pallid white.  _Where the krif is he from? Who the krif is he?_

The eyes fixed on hers are icy clear brown, impassive.

Then suddenly not impassive at all. 

Very clearly and obviously, like someone signally with a flag, Sward looks down and to his right.  Meets her eyes again, and repeats the movement.  And his expression is no longer cold and emotionless but alive, and shaking with feeling.  With fear, and grief, and concern.

He’s shifted his position, very slightly; his left shoulder and the back of his head are turned towards the camera on the far wall.  His face and the whole of his right side, obscured from it.

_Force, **what**?  He’s masking the camera viewpoint?  No.  No, surely not, he can’t be.  _

_This can’t be happening.  I’m hallucinating._

_It has to be a variant on the empathy technique; playing a role, convincing me he’s here to extract me, then betraying that hope to bring me finally to breaking point._

Once again, he gives her that urgent, apprehensive eye-flick; and this time it’s no use, she cannot stop her own eyes moving sideways and down, guided by his.

He has his right hand raised to the breast of his jacket, completely out of sight of the camera. 

Held delicately between the tips of his first and second fingers is a tiny capsule, the unmistakable shape of an Alliance-issue lullaby pill.  Red and white casing; potassium cyanide.  The chance of death, mere centimetres away. 

Thiepp inhales, exhales, tries not to shudder with longing at the sight.

Sward strokes her face again.  “I’ve read your file.  You could have made something of yourself, if you hadn’t decided to throw in your lot with the rebel scum.  You still could, if you just change your mind.  Stop fighting us.”  It’s weird how his voice seems to have a minuscule quiver in it.  The suicide pill shakes minutely.  His eyes are boring into her, and it’s not fanaticism but something akin to desperation she sees.  “You’ve done enough,” he murmurs.  “You can let them go now.  They aren’t coming for you.  You don’t need to hold out for them anymore.” 

He runs his thumb over her lower lip, as if like the previous batch of torturers he’s aroused by her brokenness.  Swallows and says “You must have been such a pretty girl.”  The lascivious tone wobbles, very slightly. 

He looks almost ill.  Thiepp watches, incredulous.

He moves the pill, very precisely, shifting it down till it’s completely hidden between his fingertips; then raises his right hand, all the way to her mouth.  “Such a pretty girl.  Wouldn’t you like to be pretty again?” He pets her bloodied lips. “Just work with me and I can see to it you’ll get free.  What do you say?”

Those eyes are burning harder than wildfire, their pupils dilated.  His breathing is almost as fast as hers. 

_Force alive, he’s not faking this, the man is absolutely terrified._

_Fuck it.  I’m dead either way, after all.  If there’s **any** chance this is real, I owe it to the rebellion to take that chance…_

Thiepp opens her lips against his hand, slips her tongue out.  Pushes it between his fingertips and scoops the little capsule from him, into her mouth. 

Hangs, staring her interlocutor in the eye, waiting.  Death ( _maybe, please, **please**_ ) safe between her teeth, held ready to bite down upon. 

Wearily, brokenly, she moves her head, nods fractionally. 

Sward inhales; his nostrils flutter with the intensity of his breath.  He says slowly “Wise choice.  You’re going to be transferred to my ship.  Your debrief will be continued there.  I’m going to make the arrangements now.  Give me half an hour, and you’ll be on your way to a new life and a chance to make a new beginning with the Empire.”

She can’t speak, with the pill in place, but she thinks irritably _How the hell do you expect me to calculate a half hour?  You think they give me a chrono in here?_

Her expression probably says much the same thing.  For one last moment his eyes are full of life and pain and grief.  His lips move, forming soundless words.

_Count_ , he mouths; and then, _I’m sorry_.

“Good girl,” is all he says aloud. 

He straightens and moves away from her, his face settling back to the immaculate core of ice, the downturned mouth and dead eyes of the professional Imperial murderer.  The door shuts crisply behind him.

Thiepp counts.  One, two, three, four…

The pill feels very small between her teeth, and very fragile.

The cell is cold, and her legs and lower back are entirely numb now. 

Somewhere around 800 she loses count and has to start again. 

_This had better be for real, you sadistic dark-eyed fucker._

_Please, please…_

583, 584, 585…

_Mama, I’m sorry.  General, I tried.  I hope you got my last transmission._

671, 672, 673, 674…

_Please let this not be a game.  Not another technique.  Please let me die._

837, 838, 839…

839, 860, 861 – _no, no, that’s wrong.  Krif. **Krif.**   Oh, fucking shavit, I lost count again._

_I’ve given him, what, 25 minutes by now, maybe?_

_I think that will have to do._

_Let’s see what happens._

_I hope this is real._

_._

_I’ve done my best._

_._

_._

_May the Force be with me._

.

She bites down.


	2. Debrief

“By the time I was able to get on site and establish contact, Agent Thiepp had already been under interrogation for at least three standard days and her physical and mental condition were deteriorating rapidly.  It was immediately apparent to me that she was very close to breaking.  I was unable to organise a reliable extraction within the very limited time period available.  The interrogation sessions I was – unable to avoid witnessing – made it apparent that at least one of our contacts in the system has gone over to the enemy.  Some of the questions were disturbingly close to the truth.  It was imperative that Thiepp be neutralised by any means necessary.  To this end I utilised my one opportunity to speak with her privately in order to pass her my lullaby.”

Draven stiffens for a moment.  A sharp in-breath. 

Cassian waits.  Surely the expected dressing-down will come now. 

But after an almost-audible inner count of ten, the General simply says “Go on.”

A deep breath of his own; and he continues.  “I was able to communicate with Agent Thiepp that she should wait half an hour before making use of the capsule.  I made use of this time to slice the internal sensor logs and replace the audio and visual data with earlier recordings of one of the other interrogators – interacting - with Agent Thiepp.  I then created a false record of urgent incoming orders for Lieutenant Sward and made an immediate departure.  I received notification of Agent Thiepp’s decease shortly before entering hyperspace.  In order to continue to deflect suspicion temporarily I sent a strongly-worded response stating my belief that the interrogation had been heavy-handed and had proceeded with unnecessarily excessive force despite the subject’s visible physical frailty.  I then severed all contact and proceeded to the first drop-off where I switched transports as planned.  I reached the subsequent rendezvous without further incident.”

Draven doesn’t speak for a time. His jaw is so tight it’s possible he might not be able to if he tried.

“Avdila Thiepp was a good operative,” he says at length.  “Bothan trained.  She’s a hell of a loss.”

“Yes, sir.”

Silence.  Draven chews at the inside of his mouth before going on.

“From what you observed of the questioning, were you able to form a hypothesis as to which of the network it was that we lost?  Whoever it was knew enough to sell Thiepp out, which narrows the field some.”

“Yes, sir.  Also a lot of their questions focussed on supplies and suppliers.  My guess would be either Diss Ravn or Hemkar Pita.  They both interacted with Thiepp regularly but not with some of the others, and they both helped set up supply lines in that sector.”

“Very good.  I’ll need you to arrange a simple double-blind dye-test operation to flush out who it is.  We can’t afford to lose the rest of that network.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Andor - we discussed some time ago your belief that the Sward identity was nearing the end of its useful life.  From what you’re telling me now I have the impression that identity is probably irreparably burned.  Would you concur with that assessment?”

“I would, sir.”  He sighs.  It was always going to happen one day.  But failing to save a good agent is a sour note for that once-unbreakable cover identity to end on.  “It’s highly unlikely that Thiepp’s true cause of death will go unremarked for long.  The hacking of records was done in haste to provide immediate cover only; it’s not good enough to hold under proper checking in the event of an investigation.  I’m afraid I believe Lt Joreth Sward has served the Alliance for the last time.  I’m sorry.”

“It was a good cover.  I’ll have Dalio start work on a new one for your next mission.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And Captain?”

“Sir?”  _Here it comes…_

“I don’t need to remind you of the enormous risk you took, passing your lullaby to another agent for their use.  Or of how many protocols you violated with that gesture.  However humanitarian and well-intentioned, your decision placed you at increased risk of capture while simultaneously leaving you without the option of auto-termination.  Even though you were only on board the enemy Star Destroyer for another 30 minutes, the danger if you had been taken was too great.  I’m aware you’ve had extensive training and I know you believe you could withstand Imperial torture techniques; but the same was true of Thiepp.  Bothan training is as good as anything we have, if not better.  If the Empire could break her, they could break anyone, _absolutely_ anyone, including you.”

“Yes, sir…”

“You will not take that risk again.  On this occasion I’m authorising the Quartermasters’ office to issue you with a replacement pill.  But you need to understand me very clearly on this.  Neutralising Thiepp at the cost of losing you would not have been a net gain for the Alliance.”  The General’s face is impassive as ever but his voice is icy, shivering with tension.  “You used to be my most reliable operative, _bar_ _no-one_.  This recklessness is uncharacteristic.  I allowed you to discontinue the trauma therapy at your discretion but if I see any further reason for concern in your conduct or your decision-making I will not hesitate to remove you from active operations and order you to resume treatment, compulsorily.  Is that understood?”

“Yes sir.”

“Very good.  Dismissed.”

 Cassian walks back to his quarters feeling as cold as the ice halls he passes through. 

The dressing-down from Draven stings; the more so because he knows it’s justified.  He has become reckless, since Scarif. 

The Rogue One mission had saved his convictions.  It had given him hope again when he’d begun to wonder if there was any left in the galaxy.  It had given him friends, a sense of personal connection and meaning he hadn’t even known he was missing.  It had given him a glimpse, the first of his adult life, of the possibility of love.

But even that hadn’t been enough to take away his exhaustion.  He’s closer to burn-out than ever, now, and he knows it.  

He’s careless.  Compromised.  And yes, reckless.  Every mission now has an extra nuance to it, a layer of dreams, possible futures, and he’s invested in them, he’s no longer the man who doesn’t care if he lives or dies.  Life now is built on a ground of thoughts and emotions that a few months ago he had never thought to have again. To make a galaxy safe enough for the people he loves to live in it, long after the war is over; to create worlds for Chirrut and Baze and their fellow refugees one day to build a new Jedha; for Bodhi to fly peacetime transports and make friends without fear; for K to address his views on droid rights to official channels, and be heard.  Above all, worlds for Jyn to find a life and a future, to grow and study and be glad of simple things, and become the person she would have been without the Empire trashing her life.

If he has to break and burn to achieve this, it will be worth it.  He’s willing to die for that future.  But what he really wants is to live for it, and with it, and in it.  He wants a future for himself, and it’s confusing his thinking. 

There’s always been a tension, between Draven’s need to run an airtight operation with every possible factor planned-for, and the unavoidable need for agents, especially a lone operator like himself, to exercise autonomy in the field.  He used to do what he could to balance the two; tried to be as rational, as cold, as the General, in all his decisions.  Now he’s lost the capacity for cold; he runs hot, constant and afire, and even of his most calculated choices are taken in that heat.  He’d like to believe it makes him a better man (only, can he ever be a better man?).  But he knows it has not made him a better operative.

He took an unconscionable risk, enabling Thiepp to silence herself.  The man he was before Scarif (before love, before hope, before Jyn and wanting to live) could have taken the logical step, faced with that scenario of a compromised network and no extraction feasible.  He would have sent word of the situation and the likely suspects’ names, and then killed both Thiepp and himself. 

He turns into the corridor leading to officers’ quarters, and the dark closes in on him. He failed this mission in so many ways.  Really, Draven was going easy on him.  He should have been there sooner.  Should have got Thiepp out.  Should have come up with a better plan, have operated faster and more effectively, found the time and manoeuvring room somehow; should have gathered more intel, preserved the Sward identity for one more use, identified the traitor.  Should have saved the agent whose courage and endurance he’d instead repaid with death.

He’s at the door to his quarters.  It will be good just now to walk into darkness and be alone.  As alone as he deserves; failure, killer that he is. 

The days and weeks after Scarif, he could not come back here without seeing yellow lamplight around the door frame.  The first time, for a moment he wished he could find the room empty.  Yet how easy it had been to get used to, that quiet presence, that friendship, gruff almost as K; that sense of security in knowing there was someone in his world who felt safer with him around.  So many nights they lay down to sleep side by side, taking comfort in one another’s presence.

They’d been glad to face death together, had found peace in giving one another the chance not to die alone.  Living alone had seemed almost as daunting as dying, afterwards, when they found themselves still alive.

But there’s no glow this time; Jyn isn’t here, then, and he’ll sleep alone tonight.  He toys with passing by and going on, deeper into the base; with finding some quiet corner, a storage closet, somewhere he can sit in silence and work through the waves of doubt and anger rising inside him, where he can enter them and see if they drown him.

But thinking of those waves reminds him of how many times Jyn has held him when his worst thoughts rose up in storm.  Draven condemns him; and he condemns himself, without mercy; but she doesn’t.  Jyn understands him too absolutely now to judge unless it is with justice. 

If only Jyn _were_ in the room.  She would be right there, a few metres away behind this door.  Waiting for him.  Knowing he’s been undercover, and waiting for him to come back to her.  Normal.  Dear.  Familiar.  The friend, the tender-handed, the maybe-partner, maybe-lover, certainly beloved, if only he could dare to name her as such.  The one who gave him hope again when he had expended almost all of his own in trying to give it to others.  The one whose company can hold back the waves of darkness inside.

And _of course_ , he thinks suddenly; the dark is familiar, of course, of _course_ , this is _that_ again, the fall after weeks of tension, the self-loathing and hopelessness that creep into his mind after a mission within the Empire. 

But hope is not lost.  It cannot be, not yet, please no…

He raises his hand to the key pad and inputs the entry code, and goes into his dark room, to put on the light; and stops dead, staring.

The room is warm when it should have been as cold as the passageway; and under the bunk a pair of boots lies neatly discarded like two dark fruit peels.  

Jyn is curled up asleep on the bed, lying on top of the covers with her socked feet tucked up.  She jolts awake in the light, one hand reaching instinctively for a weapon; then looks up, and springs to her feet as he shuffles in; moves to his side, hesitant and brisk at once, taking his hand, without a word. 

She’s here, after all she is here.  Cassian lets her inspect him, flinches at the compassion in her face; then leans his head on hers and allows himself to hold her and be held.  And he’s home.


	3. Overheard

There aren’t many places on Echo Base where you can be alone; even some of the refreshers are communal.  Here in the underground cantina used to be one of the worst, not an inch of space where you weren’t liable to be crowded out by all the beings jammed around you, drinking and talking and laughing and arguing.  But over the last couple of months, finally, time and resources have been less stretched, enough for maintenance to start on some non-essential works; and they’ve put in booths.  If a couple want to make out, if friends want a private chat or someone wants to decompress with their drink in solitude, they can settle down and relax at small tables behind partitions, all along one wall.  The chatter and music from the main bar will still reach them, but they can sit tucked away if they want to, and already a kind of convention has grown up that if someone heads to a booth, they are looking for privacy and should be granted it, no questions asked.

Cassian Andor gets a glass of Corellian ale and looks at the line of booths.  Most of them are empty, this early in the evening. 

He’s been meaning to nudge Jyn’s arm and ask if she’d like to sit there, sometime.  Maybe when she gets back from her latest mission.  He still isn’t sure what this is they have between them; they are close, yes, but how close? – what is this closeness called?  The only words he knows are either unbearably intimate or boorish in their assumption of trust.  There _is_ trust, yes – but trusting in silence, trusting without saying anything? – is this really trust when nothing is expressed with it except touch?  Ecstasy of touch, for him at least – but what may lie within or behind or beyond their embraces, he still doesn’t know.  And doesn’t know how to ask. 

He wants to define, to find the words somehow; to know if that wordless intimacy can really be as true as it feels.  Without words, it’s still nebulous, without words it could still be mislaid or let-go; but so long as it’s unnamed, perhaps he can avoid it hurting him.  Or hurting her.  Perhaps.

Only, maybe - if he could sit down alone and talk it through with her he could – he could  –

He wants to –

He wants _so much_.  He doesn’t know what to say, what to ask; where to begin. 

He wants to see her smile, the wide-open smile that breaks and illuminates his heart anew every time; and he wants to run the pad of his thumb along her lips and feel her breath on his knuckles; to pull her close, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers, kissing her until they are both breathless.  Wants to ask her about everything, tell her everything; know every subtle lonely thought she has ever struggled with, everything that has made her smile or glare or cry, or helped her somehow to keep a grip on hope.  Wants to hold her close, feel her body strong against his, tender breasts, muscular limbs; feel her soldier’s hands touch him as gently as if they had never known war.

Wants to make love to her slowly, to taste every inch of her again and again, savour her and learn all her textures, where she is sweet and where salt, to have his tongue explore where her body grows hot or wet or desperate; wants to make it last for hours, to see her eyes blown wide and her lips panting, and discover if he can ever exhaust his desire for her. 

Wants also to have her ride him like a speeder, pin him down and drive him on yelling, wants to fuck up into her until she whoops his name and collapses above him limp with pleasure.

Wants to know what she looks like in the mornings; not just once or twice and now-and-then, but all the mornings, happy ones and hurried, fearful and peaceful, mornings that run long, long into a future and a life he’d never imagined until now.

Wants also to do nothing that could ever risk this precious friendship that has opened him up and set him on fire again with life.  He’d said _Hope_ to her, and she echoed the same word at him, incredulous yet with that tiny flicker of longing for it to be real.  And it flew back like a homing bird, and roosted in him.  _Yes, hope, please, yes, yes…_

He wants everything, and he doesn’t know what he wants, or how he could ever begin to tell her about it.  He loves her, that much he knows; but saying that word, asking her straight out whether she feels the same, might be the very thing that drives her away.

He takes his drink and makes his way wearily to one of the booths, grateful to be able to sit in solitude and rest his head in his hands. 

He’s so tired.  Even with a couple of successful small missions under his belt since the last deployment of Joreth Sward, those memories are still sharply near, whenever he opens his thought to them.  He’s been half-glad Jyn was off-base for so much of the time.  At least she hasn’t had to sit with his shut face, his blocked heart.  He’s dealt with too many such memories; and she’s always had her own dark things to face.  He doesn’t think he could bear to burden her with his own.

A quiet drink, time to wind down after the evening meal, and then an hour or two reading briefing docs before an early night.  It’s a rare chance, a time with nothing urgent hanging over him, when he can simply be quiet.  He intends to take it as any other being would, relax and enjoy it.  He can fake the relaxation until it’s real.  It’s worked before.

He sips the cold ale, vaguely aware of the table in the next booth being moved as two people settle down with their own drinks.  Hears two voices, murmuring, idle boy-talk by the sounds of it; listens more closely, out of habit, and yes, they’re competing over some trivial training statistic.  Who can bench press the most and whether that counts for more than having won hand-to-hand simulated bouts for the last three sessions on the trot.  Two of the newbies, Minaedans by their accent.  Flexing their self-confidence at one another, showing off.  _Honestly, young men_ , thinks Cassian, feeling a thousand years old at 28.

Some of the new recruits are such kids; often they’re his contemporaries in years, but numbingly naïf and self-absorbed, kept safe until now by lives of shelter and privilege.  Cassian knows better than to resent the easy lives they’ve led; what use would he have been, what good could he have done in the galaxy, if he’d been babied with prosperity and ignorance?  

But he worries how many of them will fall by the wayside when things get really tough.  As they will.  This base can’t stay hidden forever. 

Nonetheless; these youngsters had conviction enough to bring them out of comfort and into the back of beyond, to a rebel base on a world of hell-ice.  He’s being unjust. 

They’ve given up their privilege, to come and fight.

They still make him uncomfortable sometimes, just the same.

These two now, next door, raising their voices now as the bartender puts on some music to bring in the evening crowd; these two are waving their pride like pod-racers comparing piston size.  _Such kids_ , he thinks again, with a sigh and a wry chuckle.  He takes a long pull of his ale.  _Let them be, old man, they’re not hurting you._

“I’m telling you, next time that training Sergeant tries her ankle-sweep thing on me I’ll be ready for her.”

“Sergeant Erso?  She’s due back next week.”

He can’t help it; his ears practically prickle up.

“Yeah, I know.  I’m telling you, I’ve got her measure now.  I’ve seen her weaknesses.”

Cassian grins in the next booth.  Naïf was putting it mildly…

“She hasn’t got any weaknesses, that one,” says the second speaker.  “She’s a war machine.”

“Nah, she’s a woman.  Human as the rest of us.” 

There’s a pause, and both young men laugh.  It’s a laugh with a greedy tone.  Cassian imagines lewd hands sketching-out an imaginary female form in the air.  His smile sinks into a frown.  Creeps.

But they hush for a few minutes and he begins to think maybe they’ll leave the subject of Jyn alone now, find something else to talk about.  Blasters, or smash-ball, or something.  Please.

Then the laughter comes again, and the confidant one says “Yeah, that’s what she needs.  Her and her boyfriend.  Need to let their hair down, the both of them, I’m telling you.”

**_What?_ **

“Didn’t know she had a boyfriend.  I’d’ve though she was sexless, that one.”

“Sexless, her?”  A whistle.  “I wanna see him handle that sexless.”

“You mean you’d like to – with her? –“

“No!” Laughter.  “Not me.  Wouldn’t dare.  She’d break my neck.”

_Damn right she would._ _Hijo de puta…_

“No,” the confidant one says “but I’d like to see him take her through a training programme or two, if you know what I mean.  He’s a spook, after all.  They have to do bad, bad things to people sometimes.  Be good to get to watch.  Yeah.  Like to see him spike her drink, watch her lose it for him.  That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”

The second speaker sounds awkward as he says “ We-ell, I’m not sure about that, really, I mean it’s kind of not my thing –“

“Ah, bantha-squit it’s not.  Wouldn’t you like to see that fit little woman getting down and – aww, come on!  You’ve got to admit, take away her fight and her inhibitions and she’d be gagging for it.  Spreading herself out like a platter of cake, begging him to eat her cream.  I bet you.”

A nervous laugh. “Ha-ha, yeah, no, not – not really looking to make any bets, not really a gambling man.  Seriously, Filipes.  I just can’t imagine the Sergeant wanting to do anything but kill someone who roofied her.  Or anyone who talked about it, for that matter.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not here so she doesn’t know.  Come on, you wet wampa, it’s only a joke.  A fantasy.  I think they’re great together, those two, I just wanna see them let their hair down a bit.”

Cassian stands up.  He’s been trained to move unheard in far quieter situations than this.  In silence he slips out of his own booth and round the partition into theirs; and his hands have already uncurled from their white-knuckled fists, his expression is already impassive and professional.  He stands looking down at them, saying nothing.

From the position of their voices, he’s guessed that it’s the taller, fleshier, younger one on the far side of the table who is uncomfortable with the conversation ( _but not uncomfortable enough to shut it down, the son of a bitch_ ).  That means the one nearer to his side is the asshole with the voyeuristic drug-rape fantasies.  Filipes.  He’s looking down at a short dark man of thirty or so, with a pleasant unremarkable face and a very new, very clean alliance-issue shirt with an officer-candidate tab at the collar.

“You were saying, cadet?”

Filipes swallows; then throws his head back and his chin up, asserting himself.  “Who wants to know?”

“You know who I am.”  Cassian is blocking his exit from the enclosed space of the booth.  He doesn’t do or say anything more for a moment, just stands there, silent.

“Hey, come on.  Sir.  We were having a private conversation, this is our down-time, I mean –“

“You think that’s a good line to take?  You think the war will respect your ‘down-time’?  Do I have to point out that I’m a ranking officer?  This isn’t a boys’ school, cadet, or your old workplace; you don’t get to tell me _I’m not at the office now, I can say what I like when I’m off the clock_.”

“We were just fooling around.  Weren’t we, Pañao?”

The other man looks down at his beer, shuffles his feet.  “Just fooling,” he echoes weakly.

Cassian leans forward; not a lot, just enough.  His breath feels cold inside his lungs.  He says “Tell me, cadet, have you ever had to observe or take part in an interrogation by torture?”

The man’s eyes widen.  “No,” he says, and then “sir.”

“I have.  I am, as you put it earlier, a spook.  I have had to do things, while under cover, that I prefer not to be reminded of when I am in my – again, as you put it – down-time.  But I thought it might interest you to know that the forcible administering of inhibition-releasing drugs is sometimes used by the Empire as part of such procedures.  The Empire; our enemy.  And contrary to your vivid imaginings, in fact the context of the interrogation chamber can be counted upon to have a strongly anti-aphrodisiac effect and to remove all possibility of any kind of arousal, with the single exception of the fight-or-flight response.”

“Are you threatening me, sir?”

“There are plenty of things far more dangerous than me already threatening you, cadet, after all we are _at war_.  I’m merely pointing out that your sick fantasies have no basis in factual reality.  Oh, and one other thing - your friend here is quite correct that if Sergeant Erso were to find out, she would indeed wish to break your neck.  I will be seeing her in a few days and I will certainly make sure that she understands the degree of respect her trainees have for her.”

He turns on his heel before the smug little man can bluster at him anymore.

He feels tired, and nauseous.  His heart is racing.  Part of him would like to go back and beat Filipes into a bloody pulp.  But thrashing the man won’t help.  He would still have heard the things he heard.  Still have been reminded of the things he’s seen, all the things he tries so hard to let go of.  Of the chamber on Coruscant three years back, the dying men and women thrown down there like so many torn coats.  Of that line of sentients marched out for execution on Lothal, with their blinded eyes and bloody mouths.  Of Agent Thiepp hanging by her broken wrists, silently enduring her last hour of life. 

He would still have the mental image of Jyn in a chamber like that.  The bitterest of his memories and the other man’s vile daydream are lashed together now; they taint his mind, and maybe they will forever. 

He manages to get back to his quarters before throwing up.   

When Jyn returns from her mission the first thing he tells her about Filipes is that the recruit claims to have spotted her weaknesses as a fighter and a trainer. 

She laughs, amused and dismissive. “Filipes?  Oh, I know him.  He’s got _no idea_.  Big in the mouth and small in the pants, that’s Filipes.”

Cassian says carefully “I think he’s a bit of a creep, too; I got stuck behind him in the bar recently and overheard him telling someone his sex-fantasies.” 

Her whole-hearted and innocent reaction of “Ugh, ewww!” warms his cold heart. 

It may be a long while now before he can build up the nerve to ask if she’d like to sit at a private table with him, like a regular couple.  But he’ll watch her training the cadets in hand-to-hand, and feel a kind of satisfaction that he didn’t need to tell her the whole story.  She’s still sending Filipes crashing to the floor every time with her ankle-sweep manoeuvre, just the same.  She’d likely have sent him to the med-bay with multiple skull fractures if she’d known the rest.  

She’s risen so high above the pain of her early life; he’ll put himself to any further hurt if it means she can live free of it now.  She deserves better than he can ever give her, better than he can ever hope to be; the man he is, the things he’s done.

And if that means he can only love her without saying the words, so be it. 


	4. Fight

“Good morning.  So.  You’ve been captured.”

 Jyn Erso has her hands on her hips and a cheerful expression as she faces the room of people.

Her students are less phlegmatic; frowning or pulling faces, understandably ill-at-ease with the idea of being taken prisoner, wondering where she’s going to take today’s lesson.  Cassian scans along the row of faces.  Watches for nuances of expression.

His eyes linger for a second on the over-confident face of cadet Filipes.  _Watch that one especially._

“Come on,” Jyn says to the class.  “Captured.  What do you do?”  Silence.  She cocks an eyebrow.  “It’s a genuine question; what do you do, people?  Anyone?”

“Call for help?” someone suggests uncertainly.

“No,” Cassian says.  “You’ve already been captured; it’s too late for that.  First thing they’ll do is take your comm, unless you manage to destroy it first.”

A Twi’lek recruit says softly “Lullaby?” 

He feels his face shift and freeze at the word.  Jyn’s eyes flick to him for a second and then go back to the trainees.  “Good, that’s a better answer.  In certain circumstances, if you’re unable to get away, you may have to use your L-pill.  But don’t discount another option; escaping.  It’s often a real possibility.  And that’s what we’re going to be working on today.  Hand-to-hand moves suitable for escape combat.” She glances his way again; a ghost of a grin. “Captain Andor has very kindly volunteered to help me with some demonstrations.”

He makes himself relax enough to return her smile.  Opens the first of the two boxes he brought with him and empties out a dozen sets of cuffs and binders.

“So,” Jyn says.  “Who are you likely to be captured by?  Imps, obviously, but also non-aligned partisan cells, separatists, gangs, slavers, contacts acting in bad faith, local law enforcement…  Of all these, Imps are the only ones likely to be in full body armour.  We’ll look at the weak spots on body protections that different sentient races use.  But the Imps are the big bad for us, right?  So we’re going to focus mainly on disarming and overpowering a guard in standard ‘trooper whites.”  She looks around at the unhappy people surrounding her in the gym.  Cassian flicks an eye to the Minaedan again, in time to see the man leer behind an upraised hand.  _Hijo de su madre_ … 

“Imperials tend to be well-armed and in general they don’t hesitate to shoot to kill,” Jyn goes on, oblivious. “Generally they work in groups, and that can cause problems too, but we’ll start off working one-on-one so you learn the basic moves as soon as possible.  An attempt to escape Imperial custody needs both skill and care; we’ll be doing a _lot_ of practice bouts today. 

“They will also almost certainly use stun-cuffs –“

She gestures at Cassian and he holds up a pair from the training box.

“So we’ll also cover different ways of breaking out of those.  Okay.  First of all, let’s look at how to break a head-lock and an arm-grip, and how to get a choke-hold on someone.  Then we’ll move on to some basic smash ‘em up stuff to disable a better-armoured opponent long enough to make a run for it.  Any questions?  Fine.  Captain, would you please cuff me?” 

As he locks the binders onto her outstretched arms Cassian monitors Filipes in his peripheral vision. The young man is smothering a smirk.  _What’s he thinking, this is funny?  This is **fun**?  The sick fuck_ …

“Great,” says Jyn, flexing her wrists in the binders.  “Take a look, everyone, you can see I’m pretty much immobilised, right?  Okay, let’s show you a few tricks.”

She moves to stand in front of Cassian with her back to him.  On her nod, he grips her hard by the upper arms.  For a moment she just stands there passively, shoulders slack as though she’s already struggled and given up in horror.  Then abruptly she twists her entire body, with a backward-and-down movement he’s still never managed to copy perfectly, and his grip is broken.  Jyn surges up with a spring, completing the twist so she is facing him, and cracks him under the chin with an upward swipe; knots her cuffed hands into a double-fist and knocks him off-balance with one more swing.  Her signature ankle sweep takes his legs from under him as he thinks _Krif, you’re really not pulling any punches?_ and the heel of her boot lands smack on the soft part of his belly, with a jolt that makes him grunt aloud.  “You should always go for the balls if your opponent isn’t in body armour, if you know they have ‘em in the first place,” she tells the students “but a lot of the time you won’t know, and an abdominal kick can be pretty crippling too, if it’s low and hard enough.”  He’s grateful that at least she stops there; and that she didn’t go for the balls.  He rolls over and gets up.

Jyn is dancing a few feet away, still cuffed but a free agent now, grinning broadly.  Around her, the students are starting to perk up.  She looks around the room again.  “By the way, before any of you start to think it, the Captain is a more-than competent hand-to-hand fighter, and he and I have sparred many times.  In theory he should be able to predict some of my moves.”  She sees the cynicism on some of the watching faces and slows her bouncing to a stop.  “Okay, listen.  This is a training situation, and for obvious reasons I’m not actually trying to injure a fellow officer.  But in other respects, it’s important to make these demos realistic.  I promise you, neither one of us is going particularly easy on the other.  Ready for a re-match, Captain?”

They run through the simulated fight again; at least now he knows what the moves will be, though he still ends up on his side on the mats, with Jyn’s foot on his stomach.  Each time she gets free from him, panting and grinning, she offers a few words of commentary.  They run through another scenario, using head-locks and body-blows.  Jyn kicks and wrenches free again.  He’s bruised her forearms, her shoulder, the side of her throat; she’s bruised his ribs, his thighs where she kicks him, his feet when she stomps him with maybe 30% of the effort she’d put into it for real.  They’ll both be black and blue by evening.  But she’s smiling, and he’s proud of helping bring that look to her face, even as he’s also starting to ache, wringing out a crushed hand and rubbing a sore collarbone.

They finish a cycle of four sequences and finally Jyn turns to the trainees.  “Okay, you’ve seen  all the moves and how they can be put together, now get into pairs, we need to start working on teaching you the how and how-not-to of this stuff.  You’ll copy each move in turn until you get it right.  For the time being we’ll work uncuffed, so you can use your arms for balance and to break your fall.  Captain?” She holds up the binders and he undoes them with a click on the code panel.  “Thanks.  Okay, people, let’s get started.”

It seems at first to be a normal session, now the students are working.  There are quick learners and slow learners, natural fighters and those who have – Force alive! - _so kriffing much_ still to learn.  Jyn talks a short Mirialan and a whip-tall Zabrak through additional moves for small beings captured by taller ones, and very tall beings captured by short ones.  Everyone repeats the sequences; the twist and drop, kick and head-butt, the body-slam, the swipe, the foot-stomp, the sharp blows from knee or elbow, to the belly or the generative organs or the soft part of the throat. 

“You’re all doing pretty well,” Jyn says after a time.  “We’ll do choke-holds next.”

By this stage some of the recruits are wincing and flinching before they even see the demonstration.  He catches Jyn’s eye with a twitch of a brow, and she takes a short breath and lets it out, purses her lips, nods once.  Cassian pulls the other training equipment box over and issues a range of protective gear, padding for forearms and throat guards for the front of the neck.  “Bear in mind,” he tells one unhappy trainee “In a real-life situation, you won’t have any of this.” The boy flinches, straightens, visibly steeling himself to get hurt, or to give hurt, again.

“Your lives could depend on this one day,” Jyn says crisply.  “And you’re griping about getting bruised in training?  Saw Gerrera would have been breaking bones by now!” He knows the glare she’s putting on is not her real fighting face, but it’s stern enough to make some of the students cringe.  “And as for _you_ ,” Jyn says, pointing into the group “You need to stop egoizing and _focus_.  This is not about showing off your muscles, you idiot.  _Concentrate_.”

She’s pointing at Filipes.  The burly young man draws himself up, smirking at her as though he’s being commended. 

“I’m serious.” She sounds it. “If you don’t concentrate, how is your training partner supposed to learn anything?  Risk your own safety if you wish, but you have no business letting your team down.”

She isn’t being hard on him; the comment is fair, and for all she may cite Saw’s training methods as a threat, Cassian knows how carefully Jyn tries to avoid replicating them. 

“My training partner’s too weak to match me, Sergeant.”  The Minaedan’s voice is smugly defensive.

“Really?  You’re telling me that, in front of him?  Dick move, Cadet.  If you’d been paying attention over the last hour you’d know that anyone can be strong enough to beat you, if they’ve got the right moves and the experience to use them well.  Okay, people –“  Jyn claps her hands at everyone “Let’s do this again!”

Filipes puffs up, calls out in a voice sharp with bravado “Would _you_ work with me, Sarge?” 

Jyn is turning back to look at him, drawing breath to answer; and Cassian steps between them.  Fury and disgust tingle through him to his fingertips.  “No!”

Jyn stares.

“I’ll pair with you.  The Sergeant needs to supervise the whole class.  Fight me, Filipes.”

For a second Jyn’s eyes meet his, with a microscopic frown of query.  He keeps his face impassive, and after a second she shrugs.  “Okay.  You’ve got your new partner, Filipes.  Now move!”

Cassian moves onto the training mats again, rolling his stiff shoulder and watching as Filipes sizes him up.  They may turn out to be quite well-matched; there’s a slight height advantage on his side, a definite weight advantage the other way.  They step towards one another, eyes locked, starting to settle into the situation.

“Don’t want to see my hands on her, huh?” the young man murmurs under the noise as around them the others begin another bout.

“Shut up and practise the manoeuvre, Cadet.”

Filipes smirks and offers his throat theatrically.  Cassian puts the headlock on him, placing himself, precise and exact, doing no harm but showing properly how it’s done.  When the struggle isn’t as easy as the other clearly expected, he doesn’t comment, except to coach him through the moves; keeps his voice level and calm.  Shows not a flicker, not a breath of the tension those greedy eyes provoke in him. 

At least now Filipes is really working at it.

After five repetitions they swap roles. Manoeuvre, tussle, fight and fall; again and again.  “Not bad,” he says curtly as his opponent executes the last moves of the sequence; messily, but with a little extra pressure he still brought Cassian to his knees before relinquishing the headlock.  “But don’t rely just on your muscle bulk; you need to get the technique as well.  Again!”

They square up to one another once more. 

“How many times are you going to press repeat, Captain?  I won that bout fair and square.”

Cassian shakes his head.  “You’re relying too much on your weight instead of perfecting the manoeuvres themselves.  Find yourself up against someone more heavily muscled than me – which is to say, plenty of potential opponents - and you’ll be in real trouble.”

Filipes glares, his lip curling in unspoken disagreement; and hurls himself on Cassian.  A frontal attack, instead of the side opening they’ve been working on. 

He’d like to say _well done_ , since it’s been earned this time; a surprise move is a far more intelligent approach than the lazy reliance on superior weight.  But he never gets the chance.  Filipes swings back and belts him across the face in an open-palmed slap.  It’s a move he could never have anticipated, childish and petty. And in any normal regular combat situation, useless.  But this is not a normal, regular combat situation.  This is Filipes losing his temper; and Cassian is not braced for that, is not prepared at all for the idea that any of these fights might be other than training.

Fuck.  Fuck fuck _fuck_ –

He dodges a thumb gouging at his eye, feels it impact jarringly hard on his cheekbone – knows that will hurt Filipes as much as it does him, though the other man’s thick nail has broken skin and he can feel a trickle of blood on his face.  The next bow is a low kick, straight for his balls.  He shifts his weight sideways enough to take it on the front of the leg, just above the knee.  With all Filipes’ thick-set weight behind it - _Force that **hurt**!_ – he goes down with a crash and they’re grappling on the floor mats.

He can hear that Jyn is shouting.  Her words are lost in the storm of gasping breath and pounding heartbeat, but he recognises the sound even then, would know that voice as he has known it, on a battlefield, in a tsunami, in the end of a world.  Another pair of fighters scrambles out of their way, and he recognises the bare green legs of the Twi’lek recruit, their left foot already blueing up into a heavy bruise.  Then Filipes is trying to drag his head back by the hair.  A sharp grunt of pain escapes him.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck – how do I overpower him without hurting him, when he is very clearly **trying** to hurt me?  Fuck, fuck – and –_

It’s over.  He’s down and pinned, the other man’s weight full on his back, a thick muscled arm hard across his throat, hauling him up and back, practically choking him out already.

_Well, at least the little shit earned that one.  I should have been better prepared for him to turn vicious._

He lifts his left hand and pats the mat three times.  The universal signal of acknowledgement.  _Your bout, soldier._

The pressure on his throat doesn’t relax.  Little shit trying to prove his point?  Or really too swept-up to notice?  Cassian slaps the mat again, hard.  Slap – slap – slap. _Your bout, soldier; you won, okay?_

No change.

It’s a hard, hard pressure, crushingly determined; sweet Force alive, what the hells?

He starts to struggle, in earnest now, heaving his hips up to try and get one knee under himself, clawing at the tight grip that is steadily, unrelentingly compressing his airway.  Somewhere Jyn is shouting again, but now her voice seems distant, all he can focus on is this here, this now, this pressure.  Breath sawing, vision starting to narrow, his only thought _Get him off get him **off**_

\- bracing himself to try again for a flip

\- beaten down again before he can make it

\- kicking and struggling, frantic

\- choking _choking_

Something solid and fast impacts the weight on his back, furious, grunting wordlessly, sweeping his attacker off sideways.  Cassian pushes up, gasping, breath suddenly freed and dizzyingly intense; he rolls left and scrabbles to his feet, awkward and frantic with adrenalin.  Sucking in air.  Goes to a crouch, facing the expected next attack.  Facing – a yelping, tussling tangle of two bodies.  Filipes, down and kicking helplessly, eyes wide and wild, pinned on his belly with one hand dragged between his shoulder blades and the other immobilised, bent back in a savagely precise thumb-hold that pulls every joint from shoulder to knuckles cruelly hard against its natural bend.

Jyn, sitting on top, only her compressed nostrils betraying the unnatural calm of her face.

“Well now,” she says; almost brightly, almost as if it’s all a very good joke.  “We don’t _do_ that, Cadet.  Understood?”

Filipes grunts; once in rage, then a second time in pain.

“ _Understood_?” Jyn repeats. 

She lets go of the man’s thumb; his left hand slams to the floor angrily, twice, three times.

The whole class is watching.

“I see and acknowledge your signal of surrender,” says Jyn, still in that artificially good-humoured voice.  A pause, but there’s no response.  Her mouth twists, a gleam of cynical mirth.  “Okay.  Fine.”

She releases Filipes’ other hand and stands.  “Get up, Cadet.” And turns her back on him, contempt taut in every muscle.  “So, class – who can tell me what went wrong here?  What mistakes did he make?”

Filipes is climbing to his feet, rubbing his left wrist.  He looks both furious and nauseous.  Doesn’t meet anyone’s eye.

Cautiously, as if anticipating reprimand, someone says “He didn’t notice the stop signal.”

Jyn nods.  “That’s a charitable interpretation.  I would have said he _ignored_ it; but, yes, whatever the reason.  He twice failed to respond to a clearly-given signal to end the bout.  What else?”

“He – ignored – your order to stop, Sarge.”

“Correct.  What else?”

Silence.

“Two more things went wrong,” Jyn says.  She turns slowly on the spot, scanning round the group.  “Really?  None of you noticed any other problems with that fight?”

Cassian has almost got his breath back.  He straightens up, and she meets his eye, holds it for a moment.  He nods with just his eyes, telling her he’s okay; sees her infinitesimal smile of acknowledgement.

“Captain.  Would you like to tell the class Cadet Filipes’ third error?”

“Certainly.” His voice comes out hoarse; his throat feels raw inside and he has to pause for a second and swallow. “He lost his temper.” _Keep your hands steady, tone calm, like Jyn.  Look round the group.  Look cool.  You are in control here._ “It’s true that in a real-life situation, your emotions can be helpful.  Both fear and anger can give you an extra energy, if you learn to channel them properly.  But until you’ve learned how to do that, it’s risky to lose control of yourself.  Filipes was hyper-focussed on the immediate fight and that left him completely unaware of Sergeant Erso’s counter-attack.”

He nods to Jyn again, tacitly asking her to take over.  She picks up instantly.

“There’s also the fact that this is a training room.  A training scenario is _not_ a real-life situation.  This should have been very clear to you all, if you hadn’t already realised it, from the moment we issued you with protective gear.  No enemy will ever wait for you to put on a throat guard, people.  This is a _training session_.”  Her earlier false cheer has entirely evaporated now.  “What do we do in a training session?  We **_train_**.  We do not have full-on fights.  We learn, we practice, we attempt to improve our technique.  We only begin to work in free-form sparring matches when we are ready for that; when we have learned and perfected the holds and blocks and manoeuvres and an instructor – that’s me, people, me and _only me_ – has assessed our skill level.  Listen to me when I tell you this, none of you is yet ready to put these sessions into practice like that.  _None_ of you.”  Jyn stares at each recruit in turn, not accusing but making it clear that this means them, every one of them.  “Escalating a training bout into a full sparring match without the express agreement of your training partner and without warning is a serious breach of regulations.”

He watches the faces watching her.  Some of them look embarrassed or ashamed, others are awkward, uncertain of how to deal with this.  Some have the expression of a slapped tooka-cat, deeply offended at their indignity.

He’s sure Jyn can read them just as well as he.  Her voice is both angry and weary as she goes on.  Making speeches is close to being her least favourite activity; but this particular truth is one she has to hammer into them.

“It puts your partner in the position of having to defend themselves, while not yet fully trained to do so - and it forces them to fight an opponent who may hurt them, while having to try not to hurt you back.  It’s _dangerous_.” Her voice is icy.  “And that brings us to the final thing that went wrong here.  You all saw what was happening, and none of you did anything.  Some of you saw it before me, even.  All of you heard my order to halt the bout.  And you stood by and stared as though this were a scene from your favourite holo-novela. 

“I know most of you are still fairly new here.  Maybe you’re still getting used to being rebels and not Good Imps.  I know what the Empire expects of good citizens; don’t intervene, don’t say anything, don’t step up, don’t look up.  But you’re free people now.  Learn to act responsibly with that freedom.  You’ve chosen to look up, now you need to keep making that choice.  You need to never forget that the bystander who does nothing is complicit.  Believe me, I know, I’ve been there too.

“I’m not going on about this to make some kind of point about my authority.” She turns to look at Cassian, guiding their eyes that way also; says carefully “What happened today was technically an assault.  Whether Captain Andor will choose to pursue it as such is his decision.  Whatever he decides to do, I urge you all not to follow Mr Filipes’ lead.  You need to be better than that.  You’ve made a brave choice joining the rebellion.  Now honour that choice.”  She claps her hands.  “Alright, I’m calling it a day.  Class dismissed.  Leave your protective gear on the mats, I’ll put it away.”

Deflated, grumpy and sad, the students file out.  He realises sadly that some – no, most – of them have no idea how lightly they have just got off.  Jyn is their training sergeant.  She could have had Filipes in the brig for this and the rest of them on latrine duty, just to make sure they got the point.  But psychologically, a simple telling-off from someone you respect can be pretty effective, if it’s worded right, with contempt for your weakness instead of anger that you can resist.  She probably learned that a long time ago, too. 

Jyn doesn’t look at Filipes again, nor he at her.  She busies herself collecting the various bits of padding, the gloves and guards, strewn in the wake of the class, and putting them into the storage cases.  Cassian helps her; neither of them saying anything.  After that speech she just gave, she seems lost for words, and her face has settled into a mask, impersonal, almost calm.  If he didn’t know better he’d think her entirely unconcerned.  But quiet like this, in Jyn, is rage.

They haul the two boxes of kit to the equipment lock-up in the passage in a business-like silence.  But when Jyn has input the key-code and slammed the door again, she raises her eyes to his and they are very wide.  She’s gone past anger alone, into something he can’t identify with certainty.  It’s a broken, inward emotion and he has seen it in her before but always shied away from naming it.  His heart is running a little fast; it must be from the fight, still.  He waits, watches, as always, while Jyn finds her own truth, and allows herself to feel the right words, and to speak them.

“I still can’t quite believe it.”  Her voice is low and hard, tightly controlled.  “He really was trying to hurt you, wasn’t he?  Smirking little butt-plug.  I should have broken his thumb for him.  No, both of them.  Are you okay?”

“I’m good.  I think.  Just bruised.”

“I knew he was a bit of a shit but I never expected this.” Jyn is still staring up at him, and her gaze is soft though her voice is hardening by the second, becoming almost rough.  “Cassian, when I saw him go for you – when – I didn’t realise what was happening for a moment and then I froze.  He ignored your signal and he was trying to choke you out and I _froze_.”  She stops with a tiny gasp, as if for a second it is hard to get a breath, and when she goes on there’s something like a shudder in the sound of her voice.  “I saw you fall, it was like seeing you fall in the Tower, it was like - seeing everything go to ruin, having to go on without you.  I couldn’t – I don’t think I could bear it.  I know I may have to, one day.  But this – I should have been able to stop it.”  Another hoarse breath sucked in.  “I’m not making much sense, sorry.”

 _Sorry?_   “I’m the one who should be sorry.  I mishandled that so badly.  It wasn’t your fault.”

“Really?  A trainee I already know can be a trouble-maker, and I didn’t even keep half an eye on him?  I let him do a number on you and just freeze up?”

“He – Jyn, he may have had it in for me.  We’ve had conversations before, Filipes and I.  I should have been more on my guard.”

“ ** _I_** should have been in better control of my class!”  Jyn is beginning to sound angry again; but at herself, this time. “I was responsible!  You were only there to help and I nearly got you hurt.  I’ve got you hurt before, Cassian.  I just – I –“ she looks away, throws up her hands with a loud inarticulate grunt of frustration.  “Oh, I know I’m being stupid!  I know that one day you might not come back.  I hate it but I do know.  But.  It feels different – it _is_ different – if I know I brought it on you.  If I know I could have stopped it.”

“Jyn, this isn’t Scarif.  This wasn’t a mission, you weren’t responsible for me.” Cassian keeps his hands firmly at his sides.  He won’t patronise her with a show of comforting touch.  His bruises are beginning to ache and his throat is still raw from the struggle with Filipes.  He wonders if he should go to med-bay.  Maybe; but not yet, not while there’s any risk that Jyn will see, and blame herself still more. “I’m sorry about what happened.  I can ask someone else to assist you if you wish?”

Jyn breathes out, loudly, a single huff of forced calm.  Looks up into his face again.  “No.  Please don’t feel it’s your fault for being here.  It’s just – I realised, really realised – how it would feel – how I –“ She swallows and breaks off.  Her voice shaking.

Cassian swallows too.  Helpless, echoing her.  His own voice would be shaking too, if he could speak at all, just now.  And

“I don’t know how I will bear it if I lose you,” Jyn says in a breathless rush.

Her eyes, her whole expression, abruptly defiant.

“Please don’t – get lost.  Please keep coming back to me.”

He remembers to breathe, after a few seconds of looking at her face and at the fact she just spoke those words to him. 

His sore neck throbs a little.  But he just may have a thoroughly foolish smile on his face.  She spoke those words.  She said that.  It’s more than a beginning; more than he’s ever allowed himself to hope for.  And even though he can’t give an unqualified promise, because war and missions mean danger endlessly and though Joreth Sward is no more, there will be another cover identity by next week, or next month; and _everything I do, I do for the rebellion_ ; but he says “If I can, I will” and means it with every atom of life in him.  “As long as I’m alive, I am always going to come back to you, I promise.  Always.”


	5. Truth

Jyn’s comm crackles as she ducks into the next cell; even as she reaches for it she’s scanning, frowning, turning back.  _Empty, yet another one empty, where the hells is he being held?_ – and

“We’ve got him,” says Bodhi’s voice.  “I mean, target located.”

“Alive?  Is he okay?” Relief is flooding through her but she holds herself back, waiting and shaking, for the confirmation.

“Uh,” says the voice, roughened by a breaking-up signal “Ah -“

She can practically see Bodhi struggling to find an answer.  Something’s wrong. 

Her heart blazes with wrath and terror.  Wrath wins.  “If they’ve hurt Cassian I will slit them from shabs to shoulder-blades, I’ll – I’ll – fuck, Bo, just tell me!”

“No, no, he’s unhurt, it’s okay, it’s not – not _that_ – but – Jyn, they’d started to prep him for interrogation.  Just the first stage, he says, something called sorf.  But he’s not hurt, he’s conscious and talking, in fact it’s kinda hard to get him to stop talking –“

“Sorf?  Fucking chatter-juice?”  _Fuck, poor Cassian -_ “Do you promise me he’s okay otherwise?”

“Yeah.  Unhurt.  Truly.”  A rumble in the background, words inarticulate from distance.  The comm-link crackles again and breaks up altogether for a second before Bodhi goes on “ – seriously, he’s wrecked, Jyn.  High as a festival lantern.  He’s practically serenading Baze.  We’re heading to the ship.  Please get back and help us.  He might respond to you.”

“On my way.”

Heading back to the ship means running back down the passages she’s just followed, back into the main hallway, then navigating her way towards the exit.  Jyn passes six ‘troopers.  Gunned down already, no problem for her.  She rounds a corner and sees an open doorway ahead, the key-pad on the adjacent wall sparking where it’s been shot out.  Next moment an emergency siren goes off in the corridor and is taken up behind her by a whole series more, shrieking in mechanical panic.  General quarters.  They’ve found the raided cells, then.  Or the bodies.

Jyn runs for it.  Across the open parade ground, up the fence in a frantic scramble, across the catwalk and over the parapet on the far side; she half-leaps, half-slides down the glacis and races through the open field beyond, expecting any moment to feel a bolt searing into her back, fire shocking every nerve to helpless agony.  Breath rips in her throat and her boots are thumping and squelching in the muddy green earth. 

_\- please let me make it, please let me make it -_

\- and she’s into the trees, grey undulating branches arching over her.  Their dappled shade will scramble her silhouette, and that means relative safety compared to the open ground, but she can’t ease her pace yet.  The others must still be ahead of her; the sooner she reaches them, the sooner they’re all out of here. 

_\- well this is one fucked-up mission and Draven is going to have to stick it in his tight little mouth and suck on it –_

She keeps moving at a brisk trot even when the coiling woodland is dense enough to make running impossible.  Soapy lichens froth around her boots and weedy leaves fall each time she brushes the undergrowth.  The shrieking klaxons of the Imperial base are barely audible now and she can’t hear any pursuit yet.  She’s been going for fifteen minutes or so, she must have covered a couple of klicks.  If she’s calculated correctly she should be almost there.  Her heart is thundering against her ribs.

And there’s the ship, off to the left in the lee of a clearing; wings up for take-off and lights already winking, but with the hatch still open.  A figure on the ramp turns towards Jyn and nods, then moves back inside.  Chirrut, keeping watch without watching.  He must have picked up the squish of her footfalls as she ran through the forest. 

She reaches the ramp, pounds up it, wet boot-soles skidding on the deck.

“All aboard,” Chirrut calls out coolly to the flight deck above.  The engines are humming and the hatch already closing as Jyn looks around. 

“Where is he?”

Cassian is lying prone on the muddy deck, staring at her with the expression of a man whose hope was lost until now.  “Jyn,” he calls out breathlessly “Jyn, Jyn, Jyn!”

“Hush now, little brother.”  Baze is bending over him, an open first-aid med-pack spread out at his side. “She’s here.  Told you we wouldn’t take off without her.”

“I thought you were trapped, I thought we were leaving you, Jyn, Jyn, I thought I’d never see you again –“ He blinks constantly, unable to stop talking.  There’s a sheen of sweat on his face and his eyes are wild, pupils blown and staring. “Oh Jyn, Jyn, Jyn…”  He sucks in a breath and clenches his jaw shut, forcing himself into silence.

Jyn winces; thinks of the self-control necessary to keep quiet for even a few minutes under the influence of sorf.  The idea of Cassian, whose tight-shuttered autonomy is such an integral part of him, reduced to babbling makes her want to scream.

 _Fucking chatter juice.  I’ll kill them for doing this to him_.

She drops to her knees beside him, grabs his hand and holds on.  “I’m here, I’m fine.  We’re on our way home.  You’re going to be okay.” 

Under her, the ship judders and tilts as they take off.  Cassian gasps at the jolt and the words come boiling out of him again.

“I wasn’t wearing my jacket, the heat in the plant room was making my hands so sweaty I couldn’t work, I knew it was a risk but I couldn’t splice the electrics with wet fingers, but then I couldn’t get to my lullaby when I was caught, I meant to take it, I meant to, I swear, but it was too late, it’s been too late all the time, ever since Scarif, I’m always afraid I’ll hesitate, what if I was able to get to it and I didn’t have the nerve, I might’ve ruined everything, compromised the mission, killed us all –“  The sorf is kicking-in hard now he isn’t trying to fight it anymore.  Jyn wants to weep.

“Hush.  Hush!  Cassian, shh, it’s okay.  You didn’t compromise anyone, you’re safe now.”  She bends low, speaking over his ramblings; squeezes his clutching hand gently.  Wonder how much more she can say, without freaking him out.  They almost lost him!

She wants to kiss those desperate lips to peace.  To cry and say _dearest, dear one, my heart!_  

But she can’t do that to him.  He doesn’t need to have to deal with that, have to manage her stupid feelings in the middle of this nightmare.

Chirrut has gone up to the flight deck, she can hear his murmured conversation with Bodhi.  Baze is folding back Cassian’s sleeve, clipping a tiny monitor to his wrist.  As always it’s strangely soothing to watch as he goes about his work as the team’s field medic; his big sniper’s hands so gentle, so careful.  “Best to keep him talking,” he tells her.  “Get it out of his system faster if he stays conscious.”

She can see the sense in that.  Sorf is nasty stuff.  Cassian isn’t just babbling, he’s burning up with fever as well.  “I can’t be the weak link, I can’t be the one who kills us all, I can’t bear it and I know I have to, when it comes I have to meet it, I’ve dealt-out death and now I have to meet it, it was my duty to meet it to protect you –“

Sweet life, this is horrible.  No-one should have to endure being forced into this.  He’s gripping onto her hand with both of his now, staring up at her; eyes painfully dilated, lips working fretfully whenever he pauses to catch his breath.

“Hush,” she says again.  Uselessly.  Helplessly.  “Hush.” 

How can she bear it?  But someone has to, for his sake.  Better her and Baze, and Chirrut and Bodhi on the upper deck, the people who love him, than some stranger, someone who might gossip, some 2-1B that might simply file all this onto his medical records as relevant personal data when it’s so obviously the drug-fever.  “Hush, don’t think about death, you don’t need to die for any of us.  You’re alive.  Talk to me.  Tell me –“ she struggles for something, anything.

“That’s it, keep him talking,” Baze is nodding.

“I have to be the one who doesn’t break the one who doesn’t fail I have to –“

“Tell me about things that make you feel alive,” Jyn says, snatching at the first idea that comes.  “Happy things.  It’ll make you feel better.”

“You,” Cassian answers instantly.  She stares.  He gasps in another breath and “You, you, you, Jyn. My precious marvellous warrior spirit my touchstone my light.  When you fight and I’ve never seen a finer hand-to-hand fighter, when you catch fire and stand up and speak and you are all inspiration and all hope, Jyn, you make me happy so happy so very happy.  You’re true and honest and you won’t accept the lie or the expediency, you are all courage and survival and spirit, you fight, you fight and fight, on through everything, my light, my hope, it’s like seeing the centre of joy, and I know you’re not mine, I know not _mine_ but you’re everything to me, you, you, Jyn, you –“

Her face and neck are on fire.  For him, not for herself.  After all, none of that is true, surely; but this fucking poison is making him say it; and making him say it in a voice of such pure, hoarse desperation she wants to sweep him into her arms and shield him from everything the galaxy can hurl at them, until he’s himself again, until he’s well. 

Sucking fucking Force alive, she’s got to say something; he’s broken off and is staring at her, rapt, out of breath, making little moaning sounds as he pants for air.  How in the hells do you protect someone from hearing themselves say such things?  How can she show him it’s okay, and she will never hold it to heart or use it against him?  _Poor Cassian, my poor Cassian, I’ll fucking kill them..._  

“I’m quite something, huh?  Captain, you’re making me blush.  There must be something besides oh-so-wonderful me that makes you feel good.” 

He sucks in a breath and “Strong kaf.  New boots.  Good actionable intel.  Hot showers.  A good night’s sleep.” Another breath. “Fresh bread and pula cheese and pink salsa, making a sandwich, when the salsa dripped out on my fingers and you laughed at me that time, sitting with you in the mess hall watching you eat mycoprotein and beans as if it’s the galaxy’s finest feast, and when there’s melon or when there’s cake and your eyes light up –“

“You’re back on me again, I’m not _that_ wonderful – “

“Yes, yes, you are, you’re astonishing, so bold and so calm and so – determined, so beautiful – and your hands are so cool, when you touch me –“

Baze interrupts.  “Captain.”  He sounds stern, though there’s warmth under it.  “You’ll embarrass the Sergeant. Why not tell her about how you were rescued just now?”  He gives Jyn a quick half-smile.  “She’d like to hear about that.”

“Rescued, yes, Baze rescued me, they had me in binders and I was fighting and they were holding me down and they’d just given me the first shot when Baze came in blasting, such marksmanship, Jyn, he doesn’t waste a shot, six shots six kills, so fast, so smooth, and he just said _Your second time in a prison, eh, Captain?_ and picked me up and put me over his shoulder.”

“I would’ve liked to see that.”

“Oh Jyn, he’s a wonder, he ran with me as if I were a baby or a kitten, a jacket he’d picked up, like I weighed nothing –“

“You do weigh nothing,” Baze puts in. “Remind me to make you eat more.”

\- “and he carried me all the way back to the ship, all the way back to safety. All the way back to you.  And his hands are cool.  Almost as cool as yours.”

There’s a footstep on the companionway, descending, and Chirrut says “Yes, wonderful man, Baze, and I have to agree about the cold hands.  His feet, too.”

“Nice to be appreciated.”  Baze adjusts the monitor and frowns at the readings.  “Keep talking, little brother.  Look how Jyn’s smiling at your stories.”

Jyn tries to grin in response.  It feels more like a grimace, because despite the image of Baze carrying Cassian over his shoulder, she cannot stop thinking of the violation of his mind, the loss of autonomy.  She disciplines her face, forces out something approaching a relaxed expression, bitterly sure it’s never going to pass for outright glad. 

“Oh Baze, Baze, please don’t call me little brother, I don’t deserve it, it moves me so much when you say that, you honour me beyond anything I know but it’s nothing I deserve, truly I don’t deserve your brotherhood, your friendship, I don’t deserve you coming back for me, none of you deserve to be saddled with this.  When I saw you’d come for me, and Chirrut was there and then Bodhi was there, and then you said Jyn was coming too, Baze, Baze, none of you should have risked yourselves for me, I wanted to weep for shame, please don’t put yourselves in danger, not for me, I don’t deserve it, after everything I’ve done, all I’ve been, not your friendship not your love I don’t –“

Jyn’s breath stops dead in her throat for a moment, a scream she can’t let out strangling her.  _Sweet Force alive, no_.  It hurts so much, to hear him say this, his poor truth; this frantic, despairing babble.

She’s suspected for a long time that part of him sees his life this way.  There are things she knows he’s never told her, maybe never will; there have been missions he’s come back from shaking and grey with grief, and never, ever spoken of afterwards.  How many times has he sacrificed his conscience, his heart, for the rebellion?

She wants to kill kill **kill** the people who’ve unbarred his mind and drugged his tongue, and made him say these things aloud. 

“Oh Cassian, no, no, please – you do.  You _do_.  And _we_ do; we do love you, and you do deserve it.”

“I don’t, I don’t, please don’t love me, Jyn, I don’t deserve your love, you know the things I’ve done, I don’t deserve you –“

“Crap.” She has no idea how to answer this cry of pain.  Her heart is breaking and she slaps it back together with the roughest words of herself.  “That’s just crap.” There’s only the truth left to her.  She glares at him, presses his feverish hands between her own.  “Because I do love you and you’re stuck with me.  I’m not going anywhere.  I love you, d’you hear me?”

It’s all she can do.  Be there, stay with him and speak, as he’s been forced to do.  Support his helplessness, with her own helpless truth.  So that at least he doesn’t have to endure the humiliation alone.

His eyes have gone very wide.  He whispers “Oh Jyn, oh Jyn…” over and over, a frail sound shaking with emotion.  “Oh Jyn, oh my dear, my love, you deserve better.”

“Banthashit I do.  I could never find better, not in the whole fucking universe.  Cassian, dear one, shh…”

“Listen to the truth in her words, Captain.” says Chirrut from the foot of the companionway.  “Sorf is not needed when the heart speaks.”

“Oh Jyn, oh Baze, Chirrut…  How can it be true?  Oh Jyn, my Jyn, I’m so cold, oh please…”

Cassian’s hands are getting clammy, chilled under the sweat.  Jyn glances up at Baze, concerned.  He lays his own hand on Cassian’s forehead gently.

“It’s the truth, Captain,” he says. “We all know it.” _Oh._   “And your heart rate is starting to drop.  You’ve burned through the worst of it, you’re going to be fine.  I’m just going to find something to keep you warm.  How do you feel?  You should be starting to feel a bit more self-aware now.”  

“It’s wearing off?” Jyn asks. “He’s going to be okay?”

Baze nods; asks again. “How do you feel?”

“I’m tired,” Cassian says.  He’s panting again, his words more broken up, but the insane ranting is less and quite suddenly he’s almost coherent. “I’m tired and cold.  And I want to be able to stop talking non-stop.  I hate this stuff, we all had to take it in training once, it’s vile, isn’t it?  How can you stand having to listen to me?  Raving and rambling.  I sound _drunk_.  Oh Jyn, Jyn, I can’t believe you really said that. Oh, my dear, my love, my dear one.  Oh Baze.  I’m getting so kriffing cold.  That’s the crash, isn’t it?  They only had time to give me the one dose so I’m hitting the crash now, aren’t I?  Please don’t leave me.  I’m so cold.”

Jyn tears her eyes from his unhappy face.  Baze is unfolding an emergency foil blanket.  He tucks it carefully around Cassian.  More than ever she treasures his gentleness.

“You’ll be okay, Captain,” he says.  “Just rest.  You’re safe.  Now, can you tell me what happens next?”

Cassian nods weakly.  “I fall asleep.  Any minute now, any moment, I’ll just fall asleep and everything will go black.  And I can let myself, I don’t have to fight it, I’m with you, I don’t know how to thank you, you saved me, you wonderful, wonderful people, you came for me, I never deserved this, oh Baze, oh Jyn, I think I’m –“ and his eyes slide shut abruptly.

Jyn’s head hurts, an ache worse than heatstroke; every muscle has been tensed for the last half hour, her jaw locked and a glare gripping her forehead like a coronet.  She sets Cassian’s limp hands down carefully, tucks them under the folds of the blanket.  Forces herself to relax, methodically, focusses on easing the knots that have tightened all over her body.  She feels sore, inside and out.

“You look exhausted,” Baze says.

“She _is_ exhausted,” Chirrut corrects him.

“Yeah.  Yes, I am.  Is he? – he really will be okay, right?”

“He’ll be disoriented when he wakes.  Okay other than that though.”  Baze is packing up the med-kit.  From halfway up the ladder again Chirrut adds “Someone should stay with him.”

“I’ll sit with him.  Hells, I could use the rest.  But - Baze?”

“Hmm?”

“Will he remember? – all this?”

“Oh yes.”

She looks down, at Cassian’s sleeping face, empty and calm in the sudden depths of silence.  _I told him I love him._

_Well, it’s only the truth._

_They were going to give him truth serum when this stuff kicked in, damn and fuck them and boil them in every hell._

_Funny that it should be me who ends up telling all instead.  Please let it not freak him out, I couldn’t bear to hurt him when he’s just had to go through this._

_No.  We got him back.  He’s going to be okay.  Nothing else matters, I’ll face the rest later._

_And Baze said they all knew anyway, already._

_So maybe Cassian knew, too._

“Saves me having to say all that again, then,” she says.  _Make as if it’s no big deal, really nothing at all._ _Even though it is everything._

_He said I was his touchstone.  His light._

She bends over Cassian’s sleeping form when the others have both gone, and whispers the words again.  “I love you, Cassian.  And I’m not going anywhere.”  

It’s only the truth.


End file.
